Alexandra Oliver Wins Pat Lowther Award

Alexandra Oliver Reads from
Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway
at the League of Canadian Poets'
Award Ceremony

We're delighted to inform you that on Saturday evening the League of Canadian Poets announced Alexandra Oliver's Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. The Lowther is given annually to a book of poetry by a Canadian woman, and carries a $1,000 prize. It is presented each year at the League’s Annual General Meeting in May or June. Previous winners include Karen Solie and Dionne Brand.

For those of you new to Alexandra's work, you're in for a treat. Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway was a Canadian Poetry Book of the Year (National Post, 2013) and from first page to last stands as a testament to the sheer performative power of form. It's acerbic, witty, dramatic, moving, and sharp. Below is a sample of what the critics had to say. And if you've never had the pleasure of hearing Alexandra read, we highly recommend you check out some of her recent performances online: this is from our fall 2013 Toronto launch, and this is Alexandra's reading at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in 2011.

We hope you'll join us in offering your hearty congratulations to Alexandra, and to all the other nominees (Elizabeth Bachinsky, Anne Compton, Sadiqa de Meijer, Micheline Maylor, and Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang). The recognition is much-deserved. 

Praise for Alexandra Oliver

“An incredible feat of vision and voice … technically, nothing is out of Oliver’s grasp. Her go-to iambic pentameter can swallow anything in its path. Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway should go a long way toward establishing Oliver as one of the country’s best stanza makers, with a fluidity and ambition aspiring to Dylan Thomas or Yeats  … When she succeeds, she succeeds entirely.”—Michael Lista, The National Post

"Alexandra Oliver has many arrows in her quiver—all of them sharpened to a fine point … This is an excellent and entertaining collection."—Timothy Steele

"It is sometimes argued that our disjunctive times need to be mirrored by disjunctive forms: only aesthetic disorder can respond to our experience. Such a simplicity is disproven by Alexandra Oliver’s Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway, in which disjunctions of many kinds (such as the one in her title) are brought to order by the poet’s refining passion and corrosive wit. Here are brilliantly contemporary poems in traditional forms, the work of a stunning new voice."—Charles Martin

"Alexandra Oliver is in full command of a saber wit and impeccable ear. With these she tackles nothing less than the unsettling hazards, absurd encounters, and oddball ironies of our modern predicament to make poems that bite and entertain … Oliver’s considerable formal skills are always employed to prod and direct poetry’s energies to keep pace with the contemporary world. Lucky the reader along for the ride."—Jeanne Marie Beaumont

'I pretend I’m like a film camera': Alexandra Oliver on Community and Poetic Practice

"I’m a big believer in the musty old adage, “Wherever you go, there you are.” When I begin conjuring the material for a poem, I pretend I’m like a film camera, taking things in from different angles and perspectives. I’m a noticer; I like to turn things over and examine even the most superficially boring aspects of everyday life. Then, sometimes, something mystical and often outlandish enters the room and you get a poem, a real poem that works on different levels. That’s the best outcome of all, and an elusive one at that. But none of this happens without community. By community, I’m not referring to only the literary community, but also those that exist in other spheres: people on the street, in shops, in doctors’ offices, on the bus, at the school gates. You need to take everyone in as part of your circle."

Glasgow-based poet and Pat Lowther finalist Alexandra Oliver discusses community, poetic practice, and the twined perks/problems of being an outsider with The Town Crier's Jess Taylor.

Alexandra Oliver Shortlisted for Pat Lowther Award

Dear Friends: We're delighted to kick off National Poetry Month with happy news: this morning the League of Canadian Poets announced that Alexandra Oliver's Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. The Lowther is given annually to a book of poetry by a Canadian woman, and carries a $1,000 prize. It is presented each year at the League’s Annual General Meeting in May or June. Previous winners include Karen Solie and Dionne Brand. For those of you new to Alexandra's work, you're in for a treat. Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway was a Canadian Poetry Book of the Year (National Post, 2013) and from first page to last stands as a testament to the sheer performative power of form. It's acerbic, witty, dramatic, moving, and sharp. Below is a sample of what the critics had to say. And if you've never had the pleasure of hearing Alexandra read, we highly recommend you check out some of her recent performances online: this is from our fall 2013 Toronto launch, and this is Alexandra's reading at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in 2011. We hope you'll join us in offering your hearty congratulations to Alexandra, and to all the other nominees (Elizabeth Bachinsky, Anne Compton, Sadiqa de Meijer, Micheline Maylor, and Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang). The recognition is much-deserved. For ordering information, more about Tormentors, or a sample poem or two, please read on. Peace and love, Biblioasis. Praise for Alexandra Oliver “An incredible feat of vision and voice … technically, nothing is out of Oliver’s grasp. Her go-to iambic pentameter can swallow anything in its path. Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway should go a long way toward establishing Oliver as one of the country’s best stanza makers, with a fluidity and ambition aspiring to Dylan Thomas or Yeats  … When she succeeds, she succeeds entirely.”—Michael Lista, The National Post "Alexandra Oliver has many arrows in her quiver—all of them sharpened to a fine point … This is an excellent and entertaining collection."—Timothy Steele "It is sometimes argued that our disjunctive times need to be mirrored by disjunctive forms: only aesthetic disorder can respond to our experience. Such a simplicity is disproven by Alexandra Oliver’s Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway, in which disjunctions of many kinds (such as the one in her title) are brought to order by the poet’s refining passion and corrosive wit. Here are brilliantly contemporary poems in traditional forms, the work of a stunning new voice."—Charles Martin "Alexandra Oliver is in full command of a saber wit and impeccable ear. With these she tackles nothing less than the unsettling hazards, absurd encounters, and oddball ironies of our modern predicament to make poems that bite and entertain … Oliver’s considerable formal skills are always employed to prod and direct poetry’s energies to keep pace with the contemporary world. Lucky the reader along for the ride."—Jeanne Marie Beaumont

About Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway

Trade Paper Sept. 2013 978-1-927428-43-6 14.95 USD/17.95 CAD 64 pp In Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway, Alexandra Oliver zooms in on the inertias, anxieties, comedies, cruelties, and epiphanies of domestic life: They all had names like Jennifer or Lynne or Katherine; they all had bone-blonde hair, that wet, flat cut with bangs. They pulled your chair from underneath you, shoved their small fists in your face. Too soon, you knew it would begin, those minkish teeth like shrapnel in the air, the Bacchic taunts, the Herculean dare, their soccer cleats against your porcine shin, that laugh, which sounded like a hundred birds escaping from a gunshot through the reeds— and now you have to face it all again: the joyful freckled faces lost for words in supermarkets, as those red hands squeeze your own. It’s been so long! They say. Amen. Oliver’s poems, which she describes as “text-based home movies,” unveil a cinematic vision of suburbia at once comical and poignant: framed to renew our curiosity in the mundane and pressing rhyme and metre to their utmost, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway is a five-star performance from Canada’s new formalist sensation. Visit Alexandra's website Visit Biblioasis's website Purchase a copy online

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Amanda Jernigan Shortlisted for Pat Lowther Award

Well it's been a big day here on Thirsty, so I won't keep you long, but I did want to share one last bit of good news before we call it a day. The League of Canadian Poets has announced the shortlists for the Pat Lowther and Gerald Lampert Awards this evening: Biblioasis is very proud to say that Amanda Jernigan is among them. The other nominees are: Stephanie Bolster (A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, Brick), Lorna Crozier (Small Mechanics, M&S), Sue Goyette (outskirts, Brick), Rosemary Griebel (Yes., Frontenac), and Jan Zwicky (Forge, Gaspereau).

The winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award will be declared on June 16th.

Congratulations to Amanda, whose Groundwork was selected as a Top-5 Poetry Book of the Year on NPR.org.

The Birds of Paradise

from Groundwork (2011)

Adam and Eve and Pinchme
went down to the river to bathe.
Adam and Eve were drowned.
Who do you think was saved?

Between her pills, his poisons,
the water in which we bathe
is less than pure: I rather doubt
that even I’ll be saved.

My pet canary, William, died.
But, I am reassured,
there is a factory upstream
to replicate the bird

in polyvinyl chloride: moving
parts, a voice-box cheep —
with proven nightingalish means
of putting one to sleep.

Do I wake or sleep? Indeed,
the answer is the same.
Ask Finnegan. In fact, ask me,
if you can guess my name.